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Progressive ‘extractivism’: hope or dystopia?

July 4, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The controversy over "extractivism" in
Latin America has become a lot hotter.Though social justice and environmental activists have sought a
partnership for years, this could become a wedge issue.The debate is core to our conceptualisation
of what type of society we are working to build and how we plan to get there.

Historically, social justice advocates
have pointed to economic growth as the road to eliminating poverty.Inspired by authors such as Andre Gunder
Frank and Eduardo Galeano, they understood that “underdevelopment” is not a
result of Latin American countries’ lagging behind the Europe and the US.It has flowed from their wealth being drained
as they produced raw materials for rich countries.[1, 2]Could they break out of the
“underdevelopment” cycle by keeping the profits from extracted raw materials?

A new generation of Latin American
authors has challenged the focus on extractivisim because of the damage is does
to indigenous cultures, the environment and health of current and future generations.Yet, their challenge is itself being
challenged by those who insist that governments such as those elected in
Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Brazil are improving the quality of
life of millions of people by retaining a much greater proportion of extracted
wealth.

Extraction is the beginning point of
economic systems.It provides the
physical basis for production.Wealth
from manufacturing allows for the financing of medical care, education and
other social services.Extraction includes
not only critical metals of iron, tin, copper, zinc, gold, lead, manganese,
chrome, gold and silver, but also fossil fuels from gas fracking, coal mining
and oil drilling (essential for plastics), tree harvesting, crop monocultures
and massive exhaustion of water, for electrical power and aiding every
other type of extraction.

If pro-extractivists are correct, then
building a just society requires continuously raising levels of production and
consumption in Latin America.If
anti-extractivists are correct, the heightened awareness of crises in
biodiversity, toxins, resource depletion and climate change means that we must
dramatically redefine “progress”.

Though dozens of articles have appeared
in print and online, four recent ones briefly lay out essential issues.Two are anti-extractivist; two are
pro-extractivist.

Anti-extractivism

Uruguayan Raul Zibechi describes the enormity of movements
raging all across Latin America, including those opposing mining, fumigation,
crops with genetically modified organisms(GMOs) and fracking.[3]In just one year an amazing number of
conflicts occurred in Peru (34), Chile (33), Mexico (28), Argentina (26),
Brazil (20) and Colombia (12).

Zibechi
reviews a few of the serious health consequences of extractivism: kidney damage,
birth defects, tumours and a variety of nasty chemicals in the blood.One of the often unnoted extraction effects
is using one type of natural resource for extracting another natural resource
(37% of Chile’s electricity goes to mining).

A strong critic of extractionism, Benjamin Dangl,
nevertheless acknowledges that left governments in Latin America often use
extraction income to fund significant social programs.This makes them less beholden to financial
institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.Perhaps his greatest concern is that so many
indigenous communities see no real change in the ongoing destruction of their
culture when a left government comes to power.In fact, progressive governments may make conditions of life worse by
expanding iron ore mining (Uruguay), fracking (Argentina) or GMOs
(Brazil).Dangl hopes for the
development of an alternative model based on sustainability.[4]

Pro-extractivism

Federico Fuentes charges that both Zibechi and Dangl
advocate “a narrow ‘extractivist vs. anti-extractivism’” politics that “could
end up hurting those it claims to support”.He acknowledges that there are many native-led anti-extractivist
movements, yet he strongly defends what he identifies as “peoples’ governments
trying to use their country’s resources to break imperialist dependency and improve
living standards for the majority”.[5, an extended version of the article also appeared at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. http://links.org.au/node/3859.]

Though most of Fuentes’ observations are well reasoned, he
raises two points that are dubious.First, he rejects “framing the debate as one between proponents and
opponents of extractivism” because virtually nobody wants the economic damage
that elimination of all extraction would bring.But the dichotomy distinguishes between two points of view which
contrast in whether they desire to increase or decrease extraction.

Fuentes’ other disconcerting point is often made by those
defending the proposed highway through the TIPNIS National Park in
Bolivia.This is the claim that
opposition to the highway is manipulated by anti-environmental NGOs.Thus, opposition to policies of the Evo Morales
government serves “to stoke, rather than resolve tensions among the regions’
diverse social movements”.The logic
seems a bit strange since extractive projects throughout Latin America are done
in partnership with multinational corporations.Is Monsanto not seeking allies to divide
popular movements?

The reasoning is: to resist corporate power, we must be
unified; opposition to a progressive government destroys unity; therefore,
opposition is pro-imperialist.Such
reasoning could easily be turned on its head: since “progressive” extractivist
governments divide the movements that put them in power, are they puppets of
the 1%?A strong left is one that stimulates
diversity and discussion rather than discouraging it.

A most interesting polemic is by Christian Tym, who argues
that the phrase, “Drill Baby, Drill!”, is progressive when applied to the Yasuní
National Park in Ecuador.Like Fuentes,
he acknowledges that there is huge indigenous opposition to drilling within the park.But he documents that many
indigenous Amazonians just as fervently support drilling.What gets his goat is activists who listen to
only one side and do not recognise the serious divisions between indigenous
peoples.[6]

Tym returns to the classic left argument: “There is a
huge difference between drilling for oil in a neoliberal corporatocracy and
drilling in Ecuador, where the public collects 85c of every dollar in profit.”He emphasises that, under President Correa,
income from extraction has gone to improving the lives of the poorest Ecuadorians.Tym hopes that Ecuador will build more
“Millenium Communities” where citizens “are provided with running water,
sewerage, electricity, fibre-optic internet, satellite television and gas
stoves and refrigerators”.

Left
out of the discussion

The two sides often talk past each other while paying scant
attention to fundamental issues of their opponents.And there are multiple problems which are
insufficiently addressed by either side.Anti-extractivists often write of horrible effects of extractivism
without delving deeply into the question, “How can Latin America lift people out
of poverty?”This weakness is flaunted
by virtually every one of their critics.

Pro-extractivists write well of the need to reduce poverty
while paying little more than lip service to the objection that extraction is
destroying humanity of the future.The
“pro” side also tends to downplay “externalities” such as destruction of
community and damage to health.Instead,
authors imply that the quality of life would be better if people could buy more
things, without taking into account increases in asthma, cancer and water-borne
illnesses.

Water looms through every dimension of extractivism, which
diverts if for electricity, contaminates it by mining and fracking and leaves
it poisoned through the increased chemical use which accompanies GMO
crops.Actually, pro-extractivists tend
to limit their discussions to mining and leave out the damage caused by
logging, agriculture and water exhaustion.The pro- side has not proven its case simply by documenting an increase
in housing, hospitals and schools — they must demonstrate that these improvements
outweigh the enormous destruction.

Exhaustion
and ideology

Neither pro- nor anti-extractive authors ask what will
happen when finite sources are used up.An economy based on a product that will disappear can promise only
transient wealth.Extraction has a
legacy of conjuring wondrous mirages of happiness and then draining an area of
its riches, decimating its biota, leaving the community poisoned, and then
moving on down the road.

Both sides should be looking at the alternative “slow
extraction” method adopted after the 20th century Mexicarn Revolution.The county’s oil was conceptualised as a
“patrimony” of the society, to be removed slowly so that it would last through
many generations.It may have been
history’s first “leave the oil in the soil” campaign.It contrasts sharply with the recent
“reforms” that allow more extraction profits to go to foreign
corporations.It also contrasts with
ongoing efforts by progressive Latin American countries to increase their rate
of extraction.[7]

Neither the pro- nor the anti- side asks if extraction
reinforces the corporate ideology that growth is the fundamental purpose of
economics.This is abundantly clear from
Tym’s approval of Sarah Palin’s phraseology of “Drill Baby, Drill!”Playing fast and loose with health and
environmental efforts to help the world’s poor has become a central part of
corporate ideology.As Michael Klare
documents, in June 2012, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s remarked to the Council on
Foreign Relations:

There
are still hundreds of millions, billions of people living in abject poverty
around the world. They need electricity … They need fuel to cook their food on
that’s not animal dung … They’d love to burn fossil fuels because their quality
of life would rise immeasurably, and their quality of health and the health of
their children and their future would rise immeasurably. You’d save millions
upon millions of lives by making fossil fuels more available to a lot of the
part of the world that doesn’t have it.[8]

This bears an eerie similarity to arguments advocating more
extraction by progressive governments.

Fair
trade coffee or fair trade GMOs?

There is an important economic detail
that seems to have slipped by both pro- and anti-extraction authors. After
obtaining raw materials it is necessary to sell them. Positions that organisations take toward
extractivism in Latin America profoundly affect their environmental
perspectives.

Consider these portions of the platform
of Québec Solidaire for the Quebec
general election of April 7, 2014:

a reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions by at least 40% of 1990 levels by 2020, and by 95% by 2050;

development of a strategy to
abandon the use of fossil fuels by 2030;

a ban on additional exploration
and production of fossil fuels and nuclear energy;

a ban on the transportation over
Quebec territory of non-conventional oil and gas (shale oil and gas, tar sands
oil), whether by train, pipeline, boats or trucks. [9]

Support for progressive extraction in
Latin America would require removing similar positions from every socialist,
labour and environmental platform.If
progressive governments are to participate in the frenzy to remove fossil fuels
from the ground, then solidarity movements need to advocate the purchase of
these products.They must do so even if
those purchases means reversing previous positions of being free of fossil
fuels, prohibiting their transport over one’s territory, or even being opposed
to climate change.The logic of
supporting progressive governments’ putting more fossil fuel on the market requires
either climate change denial, climate change muteness, or adopting an electoral
platform that favors increased fossil fuel sale out of one side of its mouth
while calling for decreased fossil fuels usage out of the other side.

It doesn’t stop with fossil fuels.Solidarity movements the world over would
need to reverse their positions on the use of a wide range of destructive
products.This would include GMO crops,
which are increasingly grown for export in Brazil and Argentina.Monocultures of GMO corn are particularly destructive
since high fructose corn syrup contributes enormously to the childhood obesity
epidemic.To stand in solidarity with
“progressive” production of GMOs, millions of March Against Monsanto participants
would have to turn around and march in the opposite direction.(Perhaps healthy food advocates would take
down their conservative banners reading “Eat right!” and instead inscribe upon
them a new progressive slogan, “Make every kid fat!”)

Who
needs it?

This leads us to the question that could be the most rare
for any economist to address: does this product really help people?Again, both pro- and anti-extractivists tend
to overlook whether the end results of products manufactured from extractivism
are at all necessary for improving the quality of life.

An exception is Uruguayan Eduardo Gudynas, whose recent
essay on gold mining should be read by anyone who still believes it is
useful.He calculates that only 10% of
gold is used for technology and medicine while the vast majority is for jewelry
and finance.[10]

We might ask if it is truly necessary for every person in
the world to own a cell phone and other gadgets designed to become
non-functional or obsolete in 1–5 years.If the answer is “no,” then the majority of gold dedicated to technology
is not helpful.

What about gold used in medical equipment?Cuba shows that many more lives can be saved
by preventive and community medicine than by expensive machines.Multiple investigations document that a huge
portion of medical technology is dedicated to machines that are unnecessary for
diagnoses, merely prolong suffering at the end of life, accomplish little to
nothing, or actually increase sickness.[11, 12]

This could drop the amount of necessary gold to 2–5% of that
which is currently mined.That naturally
leads to the question: could the world sustain a total moratorium on Latin
American gold mining and use recycled gold from machines, jewelry and ingots to
provide that which is necessary for technology and medicine?

Similar analyses for other products of extractive industries
would also be likely to result in the conclusion that only a very small
proportion of that which is ripped out of the Earth actually make anyone’s life
better.

Enough
already?

While the accusation that anti-extractivists have not
charted an alternative path for improving the quality of life seems accurate,
it is also the case that pro-extractivists have never proven that extractivism
is the only exit route from poverty.The
single most important point of the debate is curiously avoided by both sides: is there already enough wealth in Latin America to provide basic
necessities?If the wealth is there but
concentrated in the hands of a few, then an alternative solution would be to redistribute
that wealth.

The solution needs to go beyond sharing and ask: what is
being produced?The trillions of dollars
devoted to armaments is massive waste that should be redirected to human
needs.And the question most rarely
addressed by progressives is: if we produced goods designed to endure rather
than fall apart or go out of fashion, could we actually produce less while
having more available for consumers?

By taking into account wealth which is hidden in destructive
goods and planned obsolescence, there is good reason to believe that much more
wealth already exists than is necessary to eliminate poverty.Additionally, there is a very large
literature on how changes such as carless cities, passive house design and
organic vegetarianism can reduce production enormously.These types of wealth are “hidden” from
economic calculations because they reflect wealth that would come from producing
less, and not more.For example, the
quality of life could improve as people move out of air-conditioned buildings
to enjoy outdoor breezes.[13]

Cuba

Leftists may dismiss these as being nothing but “lifestyle”
changes, but Cuba turned extensively to permaculture during its “special
period” following collapse of the USSR. [14]Cuba’s approach to medicine reveals how wealth can be attained by
relying less on complex technology and more on meeting basic needs.Cuba spends merely 4% per capita of what the
US does on medical care at the same time it sends medical brigades to dozens of
countries, trains doctors from over 100 countries, and maintains a life
expectancy equal to that of the US.[15, 16, 17]

What
kind of world?

Scrutinising the strengths and weaknesses of each side on
the extraction discussion leads to the conclusion that anti-extractivist
writers should devote more time to explaining how the poor will improve their
quality of life without additional national income.But greater oversight is shown by
pro-extractivists, who need to look at more than financial income of a single
generation.They should examine long-term effects of extraction on 10, 100 or 1000 generations.

Both sides in the debate need to devote more consideration
to what could be called the “eternity” issues.Once a species is extinct, it is gone forever.Once toxins are released into the
environment, they persist for decades, centuries or millennia.Once finite resources are used up, they do
not come back.Once enough climate
change tipping points are reached, life for humans, if possible, will be
hell.Tipping points are
self-perpetuating and cannot be undone.Ways that extraction undermines the physical, chemical and biological
basis of human existence deserve some weight in the class struggle.

This returns to the observation that extractivism in Latin
America is a global question of what type of society we are striving to
create.If we dream of a society which
is a mirror image of capitalist obsession with the accumulation of objects, but
without poverty, then extraction may be the road to take.But if we work toward a fundamentally
different society where caring for people replaces caring for things, then we
could eliminate poverty by sharing the wealth that is existent and wealth that
is hidden.In such a world, extraction
would continuously decrease.

[Don Fitz (fitzdon@aol.com)
is editor of Green Social Thought: A Magazine of Synthesis and Regeneration.He is on the National Committee of the
Greens/Green Party USA and produces Green Time TV in St. Louis, Missouri.]

Comments

This is an excellent article. I'd just like to add here that "anti-imperialist" extractivism is really pro-imperialist since its emphasis is on raising money by selling oil, minerals etc to richer countries, making the economy (or at least government programmes) dependent on them.

There is no need for increased production in the world as a whole and increased production in the rich countries hasn't led to any rise in living standards since the 1970's. What is needed is a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, including a planned transfer of some industrial plant from richer to poorer countries.

When it comes to energy production, less-developed countries have an opportunity to leapfrog the devolped countries in terms of technology: They don't have to consider closing down so many expesive fossil-fuel power stations when they think of building, for example, wind turbines.